While crossing a busy street at Salisbury Beach in June 2011, Corcoran was struck by a car driven by a senior citizen. The accident left her with severe injuries, including a fractured skull.

But Sydney, 17, a Lowell High School senior bound for Middlesex Community College this fall, dug deep and fought valiantly to preserve her young life. Family members breathed sighs of relief, hoping they would never have to relive such a nightmare.

But on Monday, shrapnel from one of the bombs that exploded during the Boston Marathon shredded both of Sydney's legs, leaving her with deep arterial injuries, said her older brother, Tyler Corcoran, during an interview Tuesday morning in the kitchen of the family's home.

Advertisement

Sydney, with her mother, Celeste, and father Kevin, were in Boston to watch her aunt, Carmen Accabo, of Westford, Mass., finish the storied event.

Celeste, too, was struck by shrapnel and overnight had both legs amputated below the knee, Tyler said. Kevin received minor injuries, but otherwise is physically OK. He was at the Boston Medical Center bedsides of both his wife and daughter Tuesday, said his brother, Tim Corcoran, of Rhode Island.

"My brother is just heartbroken, just devastated," Tim Corcoran said on his cellphone as he drove up Interstate 95 to be with his brother.

It was Acabbo's first marathon. She ran the entire length with another Westford woman, Kim Schwab, before the mayhem prevented the running buddies from finishing as they tried to round the turn from Hereford Street to Boylston Street.

Acabbo ascertained early that her husband and three children, and Schwab's husband and three children, were not injured.

She panicked, however, because she couldn't get a status on her older sister's family, the Corcorans. Minutes later, Acabbo's 11-year-old son, Matt, used a cellphone he received as a birthday present last week to text "Uncle Kevin," who texted his nephew back saying his aunt was in "critical BMC."

"We just got out of there as quickly as we could. It was all hands on deck," Acabbo said.

Late Tuesday afternoon, Acabbo said her sister and niece were conscious, but in critical condition.

"I kissed Celeste on her head, and she said to me, 'I can't believe I didn't get to see you finish.' I told my sister her marathon is just beginning and I will be with you every step of the way."

Accabo said it was "so difficult" to see her niece in a hospital bed, again, considering all she has been through.

"She is the just nicest, sweetest girl you'll ever meet," Accabo said of Sydney Corcoran.

The Corcoran-Accabo clan was at the finish line with Ron and Karen Brassard and their daughter Krystara, 20, and Krystara's friend from Northeastern University, Victoria McGrath.

They were standing right next to the Corcorans, just before the finish line, when the first bomb blew up 10 feet away.

"We were side by side with the Corcorans," Karen Brassard said from her hospital bed at Boston Medical Center. "Somehow we were fortunate enough to have really minor injuries compared to what Cel and Sydney have."

Karen had a quarter-sized pipe protruding about an inch from her left calf and another 2-to-3-inch piece embedded in her right calf. Ron Brassard had what Karen described as a hole the size of a baseball in his leg. He had surgery Monday and another is scheduled for Thursday. Doctors will also need to do a skin graft to fill the hole in his leg.

Krystara had a dislocated ankle and shrapnel wounds "from head to toe," and Victoria had surgery to a leg and will face a second surgery and physical therapy, according to Karen Brassard.

"Everyone was so excited and having a good time," Karen said. "It was really festive. A couple of soldiers ran by wearing camouflage and carrying bags. It was just beautiful, with gorgeous weather, and we had gotten notification that my girlfriend (Accabo) was coming near the finish, and we were so excited for her to come.

"Then one second later, it was just an incredible boom. You could feel the air rush right through you. I felt something hit my legs. I couldn't hear anything. I saw Ron hopping and Victoria crawling. All I wanted to do was get them away from there.

"People were screaming and scrambling. Railings had fallen on top of people. But people were running over and asking how they could help.

"Ron was bleeding badly and people who had just finished running took their shirts off and wrapped his leg up and literally held his leg together. It was amazing to see how everybody was there for anyone who needed help."

The group managed to duck into a children's clothing store near the bomb site, and Karen said employees there took clothes off the shelves and wrapped them around Victoria's leg. Firefighters then took Victoria away, and the rest of the group managed to run to a tent where medical crews were assisting the wounded.

It was while running alongside a wheelchair carrying her husband that Karen realized how injured her legs were.

"The people in the tent were amazing," she said. "It was an amazing thing to see people coming together."

At the tent, cases were prioritized, and Ron was taken immediately to Tufts Medical Center. Victoria was also taken to Tufts, while Karen and Krystara were brought to Boston Medical Center.

"While I was in the emergency room, I got a text from an unknown number," she said. "It was the physician at Tufts who was working with my husband. He wanted me to know they were taking care of him. I was amazed that he took the time to do that."

Doctors at Boston Medical have told Karen she has a punctured eardrum and may have permanent hearing loss. She hopes to be released Friday.

"I feel guilty I don't have the kind of injuries Celeste and Sydney have," she said. "We really were lucky. A quarter of an inch one direction or another, and it's an entirely different situation."

Karen said it's too early to know if she'll ever be able to attend another Boston Marathon or any similar event.

"I've never let anything hold me back or scare me," she said. "But I'm not sure. It's just so possible now. I hope it doesn't affect me, but I don't know if I will put myself out there in that kind of situation again. There's nothing anyone could have done differently. It just happened. You can't protect everyone all the time. I just hope I don't let it control me."

As for the Corcorans, Tyler was heading to the hospital Tuesday to be with his father, mother and sister. Tyler had planned to be with his family at the finish line Monday, but the Middlesex Community College student was scheduled to meet with a study group.

"I was supposed to be there," said Tyler, fighting back tears. "I didn't even think this whole thing was real until my phone started ringing like crazy later in the afternoon."

The explosive devices were detonated seconds apart, several hundred feet west of the finish line near the Boston Public Library, both near the Boylston-Exeter streets intersection. Tyler said his father described a surreal scene of gusts of wind generated by the blasts and "debris flying everywhere." Three people were killed, including an 8-year-old Dorchester boy, and nearly 200 were injured, many seriously.

"My father said everyone seemed in a daze. He looked down and saw my mom and her eyes were open. Once he realized she was alive, he noticed both her legs hanging on by skin. He asked a guy for a belt."

Tyler said his sister was just nearby. "Her legs were hit pretty bad," said Tyler.

"I thought we were done with traumatic events," he added.

"We're just so glad she didn't lose any of her limbs," said Janeiro, the family friend.

A gut-wrenching picture of Sydney being treated by two unidentified men was in Tuesday's Boston Globe, Tyler and his lifelong friend, Tom Janeiro, noted.

"We need to find out who those men were," said Tom. "We believe they saved Sydney's life.